Saturday, December 12, 2015

For nearly two centuries, Union Theological Seminary has brought together scholarship and faith on behalf of social justice. But recently the religious institution has found itself pursuing a more earthly occupation: trying to navigate New York City’s brutal real estate market without doing damage to its soul.This summer, faced with the prospect of major renovations, the seminary on the edge of western Harlem announced that it would sell its air rights and bring in a developer to build a tower of luxury condominiums on its campus, a two-block-long complex built around a grassy quadrangle in the early 1900s. While the profits from the tower will underwrite the enormous cost of refurbishing a host of aging buildings, the project has provoked impassioned condemnation from both faculty members and students who worry that the school will betray its mission by exacerbating the already profound effects of local gentrification.